Category: MIL-OSI

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Gerald Mako, Research Affiliate, University of Cambridge

In April 2007, the Baltic nation of Estonia woke up to one of the world’s first major cyber-attacks on civil society carried out by a state. A series of massive “distributed denial of service” assaults – floods of fake traffic from networked computers – targeted government websites, banks, media outlets and online services for weeks, slowing or shutting them down.

These cyber-attacks followed Estonia’s decision to relocate a Soviet-era war memorial and war graves from the centre of the capital city, Tallinn, to a military cemetery.

Amplified by false reports in Russian media, this sparked nights of protest and rioting among Russian-speakers in Tallinn – and cyber chaos throughout the country. Though the cyber-attack was never officially sanctioned by the Kremlin, the “faceless perpetrators” were later shown to have Russian connections.

Estonia has since transformed itself, in part through voluntary initiatives such as the Cyber Defence Unit (a network of private-sector IT experts), into a leader in this field. It is home to Nato’s Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, and ranks fifth in the International Telecommunication Union’s global cybersecurity index – alongside the UK.

But in many ways, Estonia is far ahead of Britain in its cybersecurity planning. A 2025 government review found that nearly one-third of the UK’s public sector IT systems were “critically vulnerable” due to historical underinvestment – with some aspects of the police and NHS at particular risk.

International cyber-attacks on the UK increased by 50% last year. “Nationally significant” incidents rose from 89 to 204 – including, in September 2025, a major ransomware attack on Jaguar Land Rover that halted production for a month, causing losses of around £1.9 billion.

Amid these threats, the UK government recently launched its Cyber Action Plan and held the first ever cross-party international security briefing – co-chaired by the National Cyber Security Centre’s CEO, Richard Horne.

So can this more preemptive approach staunch the flow of cyber-attacks on the UK? In my experience of advising European and Asian governments on cybersecurity matters, the problem is that nothing is ever urgent – until everything is.

Cyber-attacks could shatter public trust

A key worry for British ministers is that an attack on government systems could shatter public trust. Imagine welfare benefits going unpaid, tax returns being ignored and health records frozen amid a major ransomware crisis.

The new plan prioritises central government digital services including tax, benefits, health records and identity verification. Pledging £210 million in additional funding, it promises to address the difficulty of attracting highly paid private-sector engineers, analysts and penetration (“pen”) testers to the public sector. Defence companies, specialist security firms and big tech typically pay 30-50% higher salaries.

While establishing a Government Cyber Unit is welcome, its phased rollout to 2029 feels too leisurely amid the level of threats the UK (and other countries) now face. Groups linked to Russia and China in particular are dramatically increasing the volume and sophistication of cyber-attacks. They combine state resources with criminal ecosystems to exploit the vulnerabilities of years of IT under-investment much faster than most cyber-defences can adapt.

Rapid developments in AI technology are also making the threat more severe – for example, through highly personalised phishing attacks and use of deepfakes. Defenders are struggling to keep up with the scale and constantly changing nature of these threats.

Who leads the way on cyber-defence?

The US is in a league of its own when it comes to cyber-defence. The federal government alone spends an annual US$25 billion (£18 billion) on defending its IT systems, compared with the UK’s £2-2.6 billion.

Australia’s budget – A$6.2 billion (£3.2 billion) – also exceeds the UK’s, despite its much smaller population. It enforces strict rules such as 12-hour critical incident reporting and, most importantly, has prioritised investing in new technologies.

Countries that are ahead of the cybersecurity curve show the same ingredients work: mandatory rapid reporting of incidents, serious investment in AI-powered monitoring, real-time sharing of information between government and private sectors, and strong international partnerships.

What came as a shock to Estonia in 2007 has been hitting European institutions and infrastructure for years now. Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine four years ago, it has woven cyber operations much more closely into its hybrid warfare playbook. In 2022, there were more than 650 documented attacks by pro-Russian groups, of which only 5% targeted Ukraine – the rest focused on Nato and other EU countries.

In contrast, China has tended to prioritise stealthy, long-term espionage, including the UK Ministry of Defence payroll breach in 2024. Iran has focused on aggressive disruption, and North Korea on seizing funds through cyber heists – the most successful of which stole US$1.5 billion in cryptocurrency by hacking into the Bybit crypto exchange.

To keep pace, the UK needs to lean harder into its alliances, including with Nato and the EU. It should insist on compulsory AI-threat training across government and key industries, and show more willingness to expose attackers publicly. A timely but measured response should at least raise the risk (and cost) of the next cyber-attack for its state-sponsored perpetrators.

Gerald Mako does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Which countries are best-placed to see off state-supported cyber-attacks? A government advisor explains – https://theconversation.com/which-countries-are-best-placed-to-see-off-state-supported-cyber-attacks-a-government-advisor-explains-275447

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Rin Ushiyama, Lecturer in Sociology, Queen’s University Belfast

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s conservative Liberal Democratic party (LDP) has secured the biggest election victory seen in Japan since the end of the second world war. In elections on February 8, it won 316 seats out of a total of 465 in the lower house of Japan’s parliament. The Japan Innovation party, its junior coalition partner, secured a further 36 seats.

Many had predicted an LDP win. Takaichi called the snap election in January to capitalise on her high approval ratings since becoming Japan’s first female prime minister months earlier. But few had anticipated the strength of her support, with the LDP emerging as the most popular party across all age groups.

The results are humiliating for the main opposition Centrist Reform Alliance, which was formed ahead of the election through a merger of the centre-left Constitutional Democratic party and the centrist Kōmeitō party. The alliance failed to make an impact. It won just 49 seats, down from a pre-election total of 172, prompting leadership duo Yoshihiko Noda and Tetsuo Saito to announce their resignation.

Backed by Japan’s largest trade union federation, Rengo, the centrist Democratic Party for the People added one seat to bring its total in the lower house to 28. The left-wing populist Reiwa Shinsengumi party only won a single seat, down from eight. And the Japanese Communist party lost four seats, reducing its total to four. Team Mirai, a new AI-focused party headed by computer scientist Takahiro Anno, won 11 seats.

The results confirm a shift to the right in Japanese public opinion, following the trend from upper house elections in 2025 in which the right-wing populist Sanseitō party won 14 seats. Sanseitō has been overshadowed by Takaichi’s success in this election. But it has added 13 seats, bringing its total in the lower house to 15. This makes it the third-largest opposition party in the chamber.

The election does not immediately alter Japan’s political landscape. The LDP has dominated Japanese politics for decades, having been the ruling party almost continuously since its formation in 1955. Yet the election is highly significant both for the LDP’s factional politics as well as policymaking.

The election victory marks the resurgence of the party’s right. Takaichi’s conservative allies, many of whom were embroiled in a corruption scandal, returned as MPs in this election. And the two-thirds majority will allow the LDP to pass bills in the lower house that have been rejected by the upper house.

It will also now be possible to trigger referendums for constitutional reform, which figures on the right of the LDP have long campaigned for. This reform will include recognising the Japan Self-Defense Forces as a permanent military through a revision of article nine, the pacifist clause in Japan’s constitution. A referendum on this is now a realistic possibility.

Meanwhile, Takaichi’s emphasis on preserving traditional values means that progressive issues such as same-sex marriage are off the table for the foreseeable future. And her party has announced plans for “anti-spy” surveillance laws and a revision of the principles of nuclear non-proliferation. It has also promised greater regulation around foreigners in response to hardening public attitudes against migration and excessive tourism.

Challenges ahead

While Takaichi’s control of the legislature is rock solid, there are challenges ahead. Takaichi’s aggressive fiscal policy includes increased defence spending and freezing the consumption tax on food and drink. The stock market has welcomed Takaichi’s victory, but there is a risk of a bond sell-off if Japan’s currently high levels of debt become unsustainable.

Geopolitics also remains a source of uncertainty. In her January meeting with the South Korean president, Lee Jae Myung, Takaichi emphasised strong cooperation between the two countries. But Japan’s relationship with another neighbour, China, has soured in recent months.

In November, Takaichi remarked that Japan may be forced to respond militarily in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan. China responded by imposing trade restrictions on seafood imports from Japan, months after it partly lifted a previous ban issued in 2023. Prior to that ban, the Chinese market accounted for around one-fifth of Japanese seafood exports.

The Chinese government also advised its citizens against travel to Japan. This advice remains in place. Takaichi’s hawkish stance on defence is likely to be a source of tension in east Asian politics moving forward.

The so-called “history problem”, which refers to the unresolved disputes Japan has with neighbouring countries over its wartime actions in the 1930s and 1940s, may reemerge. Official visits to the controversial Yasukuni shrine where Japanese war dead including military leaders are honoured are a possible source of tension.

Takaichi visited Yasukuni when she was a government minister and, following the election, said she was working to “create an environment” that would enable her to visit as prime minister. Critics in China and South Korea see visits to the shrine as an endorsement of Japan’s imperialist past, and have reacted angrily to past official visits.

Her premiership also comes at a time when the future of the US-Japan alliance, the backbone of Japan’s national security, is increasingly uncertain. The interests of the US under Donald Trump have shifted towards dealing with threats closer to home, with the White House’s recent national security strategy demanding that traditional US allies assume greater responsibility for their own regions.

Takaichi’s political legacy is yet to be made. But through this election alone, she has already made history. Her premiership will undeniably leave a deep mark on Japanese society for years to come.

Rin Ushiyama was the recipient of a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship (2017-21) “The survival and reproduction of historical revisionism in Japanese public discourse: 1996-present.”

– ref. Japan’s ruling party secures historic election victory – but challenges lie ahead – https://theconversation.com/japans-ruling-party-secures-historic-election-victory-but-challenges-lie-ahead-275279

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Maria Clotilde Camboni, Honorary Research Fellow, History, University of Oxford

The expression is: “handed to you on a silver plate”. But a recent breakthrough came to me on a painted ceramic one. Following the clues on that plate led me to solve a small historical puzzle: who once owned a Renaissance manuscript now held in Paris.

Known as a maiolica, the plate features three different imprese: that is, emblems used during the Renaissance as personal badges. Under a coat of arms is a music scroll bearing pauses and rests; on a balustrade in the foreground, the Latin motto Nec spe nec metu (neither by hope nor by fear), and, repeated twice, the most unassuming of all: a Latin numeral, XXVII.

I had seen that number years earlier, inside an embellishment on the first page of a manuscript at Paris’ Bibliothèque nationale de France, not far from where the plate was being shown, on a temporary loan from the V&A to the Al Thani Collection Foundation. The manuscript was a partial copy of a lost one, and I had been trying to figure out where it came from.

The coat of arms and the different imprese were all Isabella d’Este’s (1474–1539), Marchioness of Mantua, daughter of Duke Ercole I d’Este of Ferrara and Eleanor of Aragon. The answer was suddenly obvious: the Parisian manuscript was originally in her personal library.

Despite marrying at just 16, Isabella was an extremely well-educated woman. This likely helped her to play her part in ruling Mantua, especially when her husband Francesco Gonzaga was away fighting in the Italian wars and then taken prisoner. She also had considerable personal financial resources, and was free to spend her money as she wished, enabling her to become the most significant female collector of the Italian Renaissance.

A patron of the arts, Isabella was portrayed in medals, paintings and drawings by several artists, including Leonardo da Vinci. To house her antiquities and artworks, she adapted some rooms within her apartments. One of them was known as her studiolo, a room dedicated to private reading and writing. Many leading artists were commissioned paintings to adorn it, as well as her new apartment in Mantua, where she moved after her husband’s death in 1519.

Isabella’s considerable library was also housed there. A partial inventory drawn up after her death reveals that it was more akin to the libraries of Renaissance elite men than courtly women. It consisted mostly of contemporary books and secular works, instead of inherited volumes and religious texts, and it contained an unusually high proportion of handwritten books.

During her lifetime, Isabella used at least eight different imprese. These could be marks of possession, as seen with the Parisian manuscript and the V&A plate, as well as the other 23 surviving pieces of its dinner service. However, they were also intended to convey coded messages.

A Renaissance impresa contained some sort of personal statement, concerning its bearer’s situation, philosophy, aspirations, personal qualities. Unlike coats of arms, which were inherited, it expressed nothing related to family lines or social standing, could be used by anyone who decided to design one and altered or discarded at will.

Since its true meaning required interpretation, an impresa was often ambiguous. Isabella’s pauses and rests on a musical scroll could signify silence, a traditionally feminine virtue, but also, being symmetrical, a visual representation of the principle of balance – not unlike her Latin motto. Whatever its meaning, it was one of those Isabella chose to adorn the gowns she wore for special occasions, namely, her brother Alfonso’s wedding to Lucrezia Borgia in 1502.

The marchioness did not appreciate overly complicated explanations of her imprese. In 1506, when the author Mario Equicola wrote a booklet on her Latin motto, she stated in a letter to the noblewoman who was protecting him at the time that “we did not have it created with as many mysteries as he has attributed to it”.

Isabella’s Latin motto was, unusually, reused by others, including one of her sons and a Spanish king. Not so the enigmatic XXVII. Its presence on the first page of the Parisian manuscript is therefore proof of Isabella’s ownership.

Other evidence was already known. The Parisian manuscript is a partial copy of the lost Raccolta Aragonese, an anthology of rare early Italian poetry, gifted by the statesman Lorenzo de’ Medici to Federico d’Aragona, son of the king of Naples, around 1477. The last sovereign of his dynasty, Federico went into exile in France with his books.

After his death, most of them passed to his widow, who settled in Ferrara under the protection of Isabella’s family. Her letters reveal that in January 1512 she managed to borrow the collection:

“The book of the first vernacular poets that Your Majesty was so good as to lend me I will hold in all due respect and reverence, and it will not fall into the hands of anyone else. As soon as I have finished with it, I will send it back to Your Majesty, whom I thank for her great humanity toward me.”

Isabella was not lying. She wanted the book because of the rarity of its contents, and she liked to be the sole or near-sole owner of texts. We could already hypothesise that she had commissioned a copy, and we now know this to be true. Thanks to her initiative, these rare poems enjoyed wider circulation; but this is a result neither she nor her correspondent could have anticipated.

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Maria Clotilde Camboni does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. What a Renaissance plate reveals about a woman who shaped literary history – https://theconversation.com/what-a-renaissance-plate-reveals-about-a-woman-who-shaped-literary-history-273654

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ian Williams, Professor of Applied Environmental Science, University of Southampton

Pairing scientists with an artist-in-residence can cut through “ecofatigue” (feelings of overwhelm or exhaustion about environment issues that lead to apathy and inaction), spark emotion and change the way people deal with plastics.

My team and I recently published a study that demonstrated this is a low-cost and feasible way to tackle plastic waste in towns.

In a quiet gallery space in London, visitors paused before 13 luminous coastal scenes. Throwaway bottles bobbed in the surf; snack wrappers frayed into microplastic constellations. Many people left this exhibition determined to change their own habits.

These paintings were part of my team’s project called Trace-P (Transitioning to a circular economy for plastics with an artist-in-residence) which involves turning environmental evidence into compelling art, then measuring what the public do as a result.

Decades of leaflets, posters and worthy campaigns about plastic pollution haven’t shifted behaviour fast enough. Research (including our own previous work) shows that emotion, storytelling and “intergenerational influence” – ideas flowing from children to adults – can outperform dry facts alone. Throughout that previous project, 99% of audiences reported higher awareness, 70% intended to change how they dispose of electronic or e-waste and 65% planned to repair or reuse their belongings more. That success inspired us to test an art-led model for plastics.

The global context is stark. More than 400 million tonnes of plastic are produced each year. Only around 9% of that is mechanically recycled worldwide. A global plan to end plastic pollution by 2040 will require deep shifts in policy and markets to eliminate problematic items, scale reuse and design products that are suitable for recycling.

Art cannot deliver those reforms, but it can mobilise public demand for them.

Our plastics researchers collaborated with a professional artist, Susannah Pal. After interviews and laboratory visits, she produced a series of tragicomic (humorously sad) seascapes. In addition to running public exhibitions in London and Southampton, Pal held an online and in-person drawing workshop for the public.

Visitors learnt about the science of marine litter pathways, microplastics and consumption patterns through powerful imagery that intended to trigger emotion rather than through facts and data. We collected feedback from participants and gallery visitors via on-site in-person surveys, Post-it note “reaction walls” where people could scribble their comments and impressions of the artwork and social media posts by visitors.

Our paper, recently published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, calls this approach “com-art”. This combination of creative skills with scientific evidence can improve communication with the general public and lead to more positive action.

Viewers told us that the artworks educated them about sources and negative effects of plastic pollution. They also said that the art provoked emotions – from sadness to resolve – that helped the messages stick and encouraged them to cut personal plastic use or question throwaway lifestyles.

The feedstock problem

Europe’s plastics system is inching towards circularity via new policies and technologies such as deposit return schemes, but not nearly fast enough. In 2022, circular plastics accounted for 13.5% of new products. EU plastic recycling has essentially stalled, with plastic packaging recycling rates hovering around 40–42%.

Huge amounts of plastic waste are sent for incineration and valuable feedstock (the fossil fuel-based raw materials used to make plastic) is burned instead of being recycled or redirected back into manufacturing.

Public support for reuse, deposit return schemes and better sorting of contaminated waste is the missing multiplier.

Globally, governments are negotiating a treaty to end plastic pollution. To reach its proposed goals, citizens will need to accept refills, returnables and redesigned packaging. Art projects like ours can engage citizens with changes to everyday routines around plastic consumption and disposal.

Read more:
How Captain Planet cartoons shaped my awareness of the nature crisis

From inspiration to influence

Cities, schools and museums can start by making art part of their waste strategy. A local artist-in-residence, hosted by a council gallery, museum or library, costs little (a few thousand pounds) compared with large-scale infrastructure projects (that cost millions).

Art projects can help unlock more enthusiasm from citizens for deposit return schemes (refundable deposits for returning containers), reuse pilots or new recycling sorting rules. Artists can jointly create exhibitions with local schools to harness intergenerational influence. You can use short before- and after-project surveys to see what works.

Art interventions often deliver powerful but shortlived boosts in awareness and intent. By reinforcing moments – new shows, classroom projects, hands-on repair events – we can extend this awareness. It is also worth repeating art activities to reinforce messages.

Emotion opens the door to action, and convenient systems keep people walking through it. Exhibitions can be ideal opportunities to recruit residents to refill trials, deposit return collections or school “plastic-free lunch” weeks. These events can showcase possible next steps for people to take through QR codes and sign-ups to activities or maps of refill points, for example.

Plastics touch everything: health, climate, local jobs. Moving to a circular economy will take regulation, redesign and investment and public imagination. Our study shows that artists make the science more legible, memorable and motivating – and this can spark change in communities.

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Ian Williams received funding from UK Research Councils to support this work. TRACE-P was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’s Impact Acceleration Account (EPSRC IAA 2017-2020). IAAs are strategic awards provided to institutions to support knowledge exchange and impact from their EPSRC-funded research. Ian also acknowledges support from the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Sustainable Infrastructure Systems (EP/L01582X/1).

– ref. How scientists and artists can collaborate to cut through ‘ecofatigue’ and inspire positive action – https://theconversation.com/how-scientists-and-artists-can-collaborate-to-cut-through-ecofatigue-and-inspire-positive-action-274667

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Eef Hogervorst, Professor of Biological Psychology, Loughborough University

Scientists have found that drinking two to three cups of coffee a day may significantly reduce your risk of developing dementia, but drinking more won’t help protect your brain any further.

A major study tracked 131,821 American nurses and health professionals for up to 43 years, starting when they were in their early 40s. During this time, 11,033 people – around 8% – developed dementia. But those who drank moderate amounts of caffeinated coffee or tea were notably less likely to be among them.

The protective effect was strongest in people aged 75 or younger, who saw their dementia risk drop by 35% if they consumed around 250mg-300mg of caffeine daily – roughly two to three cups of coffee. Crucially, drinking more than this didn’t provide any extra benefit.

Women in the study reported drinking around four and a half cups of coffee or tea per day when they joined, while men drank around two and a half cups. Those who drank more caffeinated coffee tended to be younger, but they also drank more alcohol, smoked and consumed more calories – factors that all have been found to increase dementia risk.

Interestingly, people who drank more decaffeinated coffee showed faster memory decline. Researchers believe this is probably because people switched to decaf after developing sleep problems, raised blood pressure, or heart rhythm disturbances – all of which are themselves linked to cognitive decline and dementia.

Why caffeine might protect the brain

There are sound biological reasons why caffeine could help keep our brains healthy. It works by blocking adenosine, a chemical that dampens the activity of brain messengers like dopamine and acetylcholine. These brain messengers (or neurotransmitters) can become less active as we age and in conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, so caffeine’s stimulating effect may help counteract this decline.

Caffeine also appears to work through other mechanisms, including reducing inflammation and helping regulate blood sugar metabolism. People who did not have dementia (yet?) but drank more than two cups of coffee daily throughout their lives had lower levels of the toxic amyloid plaques, abundantly found in people’s brains who have Alzheimer’s disease.

Coffee and tea also contain many other beneficial compounds with antioxidant and blood vessel benefits which can all protect the ageing brain.

The American study found that only one to two cups of tea were linked to the best protection against dementia, which may reflect the fact that people in the US drink less tea than coffee overall. Green tea wasn’t examined separately, although most studies suggest it also protects against dementia.

Why does more caffeine stop being helpful? The researchers suggest it may be down to how our bodies break down coffee. Very high doses can also disrupt sleep and increase anxiety, which undermines any brain benefits.

A principle established back in 1908, known as the Yerkes-Dodson law, shows that when we become too stimulated – whether from anxiety or too much coffee – our mental performance starts to decline.

The findings from professional healthcare workers may not apply to everyone. But when researchers combined results from 38 other studies, they found similar results: caffeine drinkers had a 6%-16% lower dementia risk than non-drinkers, with one to three cups of coffee being optimal. Good news for tea lovers – in this broader analysis, drinking more tea was linked to greater protection.

Moderate caffeine intake doesn’t increase long-term blood pressure risk and may even reduce cardiovascular disease risk, which shares many risk factors with dementia. However, people with very high blood pressure are advised to limit themselves to perhaps one cup a day.

It’s worth noting that using “cups” as a measure doesn’t account for how much caffeine these actually contain. Fresh beans brewed at home contain different amounts of caffeine and can affect cholesterol levels differently than instant coffee, for instance.

But you don’t need much to feel a benefit. Even low doses of 40mg-60mg can improve alertness and mood in middle-aged people who normally did not drink (much) caffeine. More is not always better.

Eef Hogervorst has done consultancies for media (including the BBC) and Proctor & Gamble on nutrients and cognitive function/dementia risk. And she has received funding from ARUK, ISPF and British Council /Newton Trust to investigate nutrition and dementia risk in Indonesia.

– ref. Your morning coffee might protect your brain as you age – here’s the sweet spot – https://theconversation.com/your-morning-coffee-might-protect-your-brain-as-you-age-heres-the-sweet-spot-275451

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Martin Farr, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary British History, Newcastle University

When they disintegrate, governments often do so slowly, then quickly. Despite dragooned public statements of support from the cabinet, the government of Keir Starmer gives every appearance of entering that second phase.

In the wake of the scandal surrounding former Washington ambassador Peter Mandelson and his ties to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Starmer lost his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, who had championed Mandelson for the role. Then the PM lost his press secretary, Tim Allan.

Then, in a live press conference, he lost the leader of the Scottish Labour party, Anas Sarwar. Eighteen months ago, Starmer could not have been closer to Sarwar. Now he has cut his national leader adrift and called for Starmer to resign.

Sarwar is not in Westminster. Sarwar has to fight an election in Scotland in May, and Starmer and the Westminster Labour government has been a liability for Scottish Labour for over a year. Sarwar had to act to have any chance of mounting a challenge against the governing Scottish National Party in those elections.

Sarwar’s actions may be be the most impactful, owing to the political momentum he has now so dramatically accelerated. But McSweeney’s resignation is the more significant development. The last line of defence for a prime minister is their chief of staff, and Sweeney was much more than that.

Party leaders and prime ministers have come not to be able to live without them, but so often are forced to. The chief of staff is part human, part metaphor: a conduit, a pressure valve, a lightning rod.

When forced out, their principal rarely lasts long, albeit as much for the related erosion of their authority as prime minister as in what that chief of staff may personally have provided. But McSweeney, a brilliant electoral tactician and party organiser with no experience of government, was also in the wrong job. And Starmer put him there.

The Mandelson scandal

Much of what is taking place is what takes place when governments are old, or infirm, but much is also new, or at least new in effect. To write a rudimentary historical political equation: Marconi plus Profumo equals Mandelson.

The 1912 Marconi scandal revolved around shady share dealing on the part of those around the chancellor of the exchequer, David Lloyd George. The 1963 Profumo affair involved the minister for war sharing his bed with a woman who also shared hers with the Russian naval attache – and in the year of the Cuban missile crisis.

Read more:
The fall of Peter Mandelson and the many questions the UK government must now answer

Marconi remains the most serious financial scandal in modern British politics, though Lloyd George survived. John Profumo resigned, but for lying to MPs. No secrets were divulged, but the political establishment was discredited, and the lives of young women were ruined. The Mandelson scandal combines both, and to greater effect. And is still ongoing.

The effect of Epstein continues to corrode. Endless news channel recycling of footage of Starmer and Mandelson roaring with tactile laughter as they approach the cameras at the UK embassy in Washington DC only a year ago has become a visual backdrop to the crisis. The king is now routinely heckled in public over Epstein.

The end of the line?

The history of chiefs of staff is a short one. The first chief, indicative of the move to an increasingly presidential premiership, was Jonathan Powell, who served without personal controversy throughout Tony Blair’s decade as prime minister. Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy provided the political smarts for (another politically dysfunctional) prime minister, Theresa May. They accepted responsibility for the disastrous 2017 general election, but only delayed May’s defenestration.

Harold Wilson had his “kitchen cabinet”, including Marcia Williams, Joe Haines and Gerald Kaufman, who damaged the prime minister by osmosis. Margaret Thatcher was too strong a leader to need one, though she had advisers she relied on.

This is potentially much more damaging for Starmer than for any of his predecessors. It is, almost as much if not more so, McSweeney’s government as it is Starmer’s, and Starmer himself is as much McSweeney’s creation as much as he is his own man. It may have been significant that in his resignation statement McSweeney wrote: “I have always believed there are moments when you must accept your responsibility and step aside for the bigger cause.”

The McSweeney project, born in opposition, was to reclaim the Labour party from the Corbynite left, and present it as a competent and moderate alternative to a chaotic and dysfunctional period of Conservative government. Starmer, effectively, was recruited for this job by McSweeney for that purpose. To that extent the 2024 general election revealed the project to have been completely successful. Hundreds of Labour MPs owed their election to McSweeney. But then, what next?

Starmer, as with Tony Blair and David Cameron, became prime minister without any experience of government. Unlike Blair or Cameron, however, he also had no serious experience of politics: hence his need for, and appointment of, McSweeney.

For Starmer, the prime minister is the monarch’s first minister, first lord of the treasury, head of government, minister for civil service; the country’s representative internationally. He has never fully appreciated that the prime minister is also a politician. If they are not, they will soon be found out.

Political skills are not sufficient, but they are necessary. Ted Heath did not have them either, but he at least knew about governing. Starmer was found out some time ago and now a concatenation of circumstance – Mandelson, Allan, Sarwar, the looming byelection in Gorton and Denton (a formally safe seat that Labour looks set to lose), the May elections in Scotland and Wales and in English councils – has provided the moment.

McSweeney’s departure has probably clarified Starmer’s fate – he has never been weaker. But there is still no obvious alternative. This may provide Starmer with the time during which he hopes personnel changes may help provide a reset.

If this is the end for Starmer, a serious and damaging pattern in British politics and public life will have been reinforced. Since David Cameron stepped down in 2016, no prime minister has lasted more than about three years. The impatience and intolerance of voters with the political classes has increased, and will only increase further.

Starmer’s was always a dual leadership, and then premiership, held with someone who effectively saved him the trouble of thinking. He is now on his own.

Martin Farr does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Keir Starmer on the ropes as Scottish party leader calls for his resignation – https://theconversation.com/keir-starmer-on-the-ropes-as-scottish-party-leader-calls-for-his-resignation-275488